Dendright Awarded Key Patent for Autoimmune Therapy Platform

BRISBANE, March 16, 2015

Dendright Pty Ltd, a biopharmaceutical company developing novel drugs for autoimmune diseases, today announced that it has received a Notice of Allowance from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for US Patent Application 12/444,790, its core technology patent which describes the particulate co-delivery of target antigens and NF-kB inhibitors to immune cells. The issuance of this patent will underpin the commercialization of products directed at immunomodulation in order to treat or prevent undesirable immune responses associated with autoimmunity, allergy and transplantation associated diseases.

US 12/444,790 is expected to formally proceed to grant in June 2015 following payment of statutory fees. Dendright has also secured the grant of related patents in Australia, Canada and China. Each of the granted patents has a twenty year term.

Professor Ranjeny Thomas, researcher at The University of Queensland and the Chief Technology Officer of Dendright, has spent her career investigating how loss of immune tolerance underpins the onset and perpetuation of autoimmune disease and how novel treatments for disease might be developed. Her research is supported by Janssen Biotech Inc., a division of Johnson & Johnson, which signed a Research and Development Collaboration and Option to License Agreement in August 2013 to develop an immunotherapy for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.

The allowed claims in US 12/444,790 cover a broad range of target antigens and possible agents which inhibit NF-kB and afford the opportunity to develop products in multiple therapeutic indications where significant unmet medical need exists such as Type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis.

Strong commercial potential exists for products which avoid the prospect of broad immune suppression and possible adverse sequelae and have the capacity to intercept disease at an early stage prior to the emergence of significant tissue damage and organ dysfunction.

The inventors of US 12/444,790 are Professor Ranjeny Thomas, Professor Nigel Davies and Dr Brendan O’Sullivan, with The University of Queensland in Australia as the assignee.

UniQuest Pty Limited, the main technology transfer and commercialization company for The University of Queensland, identified the potential for intellectual property protection with the invention and initiated the filing and successfully managed the patent application process through to grant in accordance with UniQuest’s exclusive licence to Dendright Pty Ltd.

Dendright Pty Ltd was established in 2005 by UniQuest and assisted by grants from the Queensland Government’s Innovation Start-up Scheme and the Australian Government’s Biotechnology Innovation Fund so that Professor Ranjeny Thomas and her team could focus on finding a way for the body’s own immune system to “re-educate” the cells that cause autoimmune diseases. Professor Thomas’ research at the University of Queensland Diamantina Institute has also been supported by Arthritis Queensland, a peak community organisation, the Australian Research Council and Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council. In addition to the Rheumatoid Arthritis therapy in preclinical development, the Dendright platform technology is being used to develop new therapies for type 1 diabetes.